Retro Gaming Mods: Vyothric – King Of The Soldering Iron

Modifying Retro Games consoles seems to be something that captures the imagination. Once you start it seems like its hard to stop! Today’s feature is showcasing the work of someone that seems to be in this boat – Darren AKA Vyothric.

A recent Twitter request by us for anyone who is into modifying games consoles, obviously caught Darrens eye and after a short chat we knew this would be a great interview and feature.

Darren has been a busy man messing about with a soldering iron and his achievements with the consoles in question speak for themselves!

TGS: Hi Darren, Please can you tell us a little about yourself?

V: I’m Darren, 27, from Birmingham. I post on several forums under the username “Vyothric”. I like video games. Originally a DOS gamer. N64 was my first console which I got when I was 13. I spend most of my time these days catching up on the other systems I didn’t have when I was younger, which is almost all of them.

Modding-wise I used to be completely useless with a soldering iron, but I didn’t want to have to pay someone else to do the work for me. It started with 50/60hz switches on the Saturn & Mega Drive, N64 RGB….then it kind of snowballed.

Sega Mega Drive CPU

Sega Master System Mod

Sega Saturn Mod

NES light Mod

Atari 2600 S Video

SNES Mod

Game Boy LCD Mod

TGS: What’s your proudest modding achievement?

V: Probably my Game Gear with TV output and controller port. Not because it’s complicated – I bought a pre-assembled board from the legendary viletim for the TV output so I just had to wire it up and add the ports, but it’s one of the more unique things that I have.

Sega Game Gear Collection

Sega Game Gear Port

Sega Game Gear on TV

Sega Game Gear Mod

TGS: Do you have a retro collection outside of the Retro Gaming mods?

V: It’s not strictly a collection as I’m not one of those people who buys games just to look at (completed 81 last year). But I do have a lot of stuff these days. Hardware wise most of it is modded though. When I started playing “retro” games again I concentrated on the N64 for a while so I have quite a lot of games for that.

Nintendo 64 Collection

TGS: Are you into modern gaming at all?

V: I didn’t play a single game that was released in 2012. I was very much into modern gaming until a couple of years ago though. Infact some of my all-time favourite games include things like Mass Effect (1) and Dragon Age: Origins. But I just got tired and frustrated with it. I found games becoming far too “simplified”. Inventory systems, menus, options being dumbed down or removed entirely. I had to spend more and more time customising games, fixing things that should have been fine. All the little things add up. Having to find the line in an .ini file somewhere that lets me disable mouse acceleration/smoothing. Stupid visual effects like the on-screen “I’m dying” thing (what was wrong with a numerical health display?), vignetting (I HATE that), automatic health regeneration, the idea that simply hiding behind things = tactical. The lack of 4:3 display support – I still prefer quality, so I use a CRT. I could go on for ages……

Anyway, I didn’t exactly decide to stop playing modern games….there are still several that I plan to play someday. But for now at least, mainly due to those reasons, it’s just sort of….stalled.

TGS: Has anyone ever made any requests from you for mods and did you fulfil them?

V: A few things. Dreamcast VGA, N64 RGB, Master System composite, fixing a SNES / region modding it. I usually don’t mind doing mods for people, as long as I’m not currently busy modding something of my own.

The SNES I fixed/modded was for @graphure and the Master System was for dcultrapro of Retro Video Gamer so he could capture video from it.

SNES Fixed

Sega Master System Modded

TGS: Finally what are you working on at the moment?

V: Every time someone asks that I have to look around and see what I have lying around on the floor, which is usually everything. I don’t have anything new at the moment, just some spares that I’m modding in the same way as the others. NES & 3DO RGB are still on my list, but they’re not happening any time soon.

Phillips 3DO

NES light Mod

Thank you very much for chatting with us. Its amazing to see one person modifying so many different machines and giving retro consoles a new lease of life.